


The Barest Moment

by gnimmish



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: F/F, beauyashaweek2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-26
Updated: 2020-05-26
Packaged: 2021-03-03 01:55:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24396907
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gnimmish/pseuds/gnimmish
Summary: Yasha does not touch Beau. [Written for BeauYasha week day two: flowers]
Relationships: Beauregard Lionett/Yasha
Comments: 19
Kudos: 132





	The Barest Moment

**Author's Note:**

> I mean... why NOT write something in half an hour at past midnight and post it immediately on a haze of beauyasha feels and coffee???

Yasha won’t touch her. Tells herself it’s honour – loyalty to her wife. And knows deep down that it’s cowardice, too. That she is, at her core, afraid.

But in the sprawl of an evening after a hard day’s travel, as Caleb begins to conjure his bubble, and Caduceus fries up mushrooms and greens over their camp fire, Yasha lets herself slide to her knees in the tall grass of their camp, beside Beau, where the expositor is lounging, propped on her elbows, her head tipped back as she gazes at the sky.

Beau glances at her sideways and smiles in that easy, handsome way of hers – with half her mouth and one eyebrow raised, like she’s half way to planning a joke or suggesting some mischief or remembering something funny.

“You good?” She jerks her head as her gaze slides back to the sky – Yasha studies the hard line of her jaw, the grimy smear over one cheek bone where she must have rubbed at one eye with a grubby finger at some point in the day.

“Yes. A little tired, maybe.”

“Yeah, it was a long day’s ride, right? I think my butt might be chapped.”

“Yes, I’ve heard that can happen. Maybe you should ask Caduceus for some ointment.”

“You think he just carries around butt ointment in his bag?”

“If he doesn’t, he could probably make you some.”

Beau cracks another smile – bigger and quicker – a flash of fire across her face, nearly laughter. “I’ll ask him, then, I guess. Once he’s done cooking.”

“Of course. Dinner first.”

“Always.”

They lapse into companionable silence, the quiet punctuated by the faint sound of Caleb muttering, bird song in the trees, insects beginning an evening chorus in the grass all around them. Fjord is meditating. Veth is studying one of Caleb’s books. Even Jester is quiet – cross legged a few feet to their left, sipping a cup of Caduceus’s tea as she prepares spells for tomorrow.

Quiet has always seemed a very lonely thing to Yasha – years ago, it meant that her tribe wasn’t present; more recently, it’s the stinging absence of the Storm Lord, distant in his judgement.

But this quiet seems to mean friendship, and Yasha finds herself easier in it than she would have expected.

She plucks a bloom out of a little spray of lavender coloured something – it looks a little like heather, except that the blooms themselves are bigger, closer to snowdrops, but clustered around rough stems, the leaves little mossy tendrils.

“Hasn’t been a storm in a while,” Beau says, still gazing upwards. “You okay with that?”

“Yes,” Yasha replies, and realises it’s true for the first time. “I think I have to be. The Stormlord does what he wants.”

“Didn’t he used to make – like – thunder just for you?”

“No,” Yasha concentrates on her new flower, turning it over, wondering if she’s already got something similar in her collection, “the Stormlord doesn’t cause storms just for me. I’m not that special.”

“You sure?” Beau’s gaze has come back to her – Yasha can feel it, somehow, like being pinned against a wall. “You seem pretty special to me.”

And Yasha isn’t sure how she means that at all. But it feels – like something.

If she reaches, she can touch Beau now. It will only take an inch or so of movement – hardly anything at all. She might brush against her shoulder with barely more effort than it takes to shrug. The possibility hangs in the air, tantalising; as close as a promise.

But she won’t. Can’t.

Instead she examines the little lavender blossom in her fingers, and the length of one of Beau’s legs stretched beyond it – bare skin, lean muscle and dark, downy hairs where the cuffs of her baggy breaches have ridden up.

And in that moment she can’t push back the impulse – and can’t think, ever after, where it came from, what possesses her for a heartbeat – but she touches the flower to Beau’s skin – grazes paper thin petals along the length of her bare calf in a slow, langerous line, up and down. The barest moment of a caress – almost an accident, almost incidental, almost nothing at all.

She thinks, perhaps, that Beau catches her breath – though maybe she only imagines it, because she doesn’t move, or brush Yasha away, or ask what she’s doing.

She only gazes up at the clear, twilit sky, and smiles to herself, small and slow, like she knows something Yasha doesn’t – something Yasha will never dare to ask.


End file.
